General breakup; Babylon comes into judgment

At the seventh vial there is a general break-up and subversion, and
Babylon comes into judgment. And the hail of God, the judgment of God,
came on men from heaven (compare Isaiah 32 and Isaiah 33). All
separate independent interests and established powers disappeared.
This was over the earth -- God's judgment by providence and
instruments -- but the Lamb was not come yet. The details of Babylon's
judgments are reserved for the following chapters.

The characters of Babylon

The characters of Babylon are first portrayed. Like the beast,
she is only one thing in the judgment, but morally she is more
important than all the rest. The general character is the great
active idolatress that has gained influence over the mass of the
nations; next, that the kings of the earth have lived in guilty
intimacy with her, seeking her favours, while those that dwell on
the earth have lost their senses through her pernicious and
inebriating influence. This is the general idea first given, a
character plain enough to mark the Roman or Papal system.

Babylon as a corrupt, persecuting religious system -- what the
church had come to

But more details follow. There was a woman, a religious system,
sitting on an imperial beast full of names of blasphemy, having the
form which marked it Roman. The woman was gorgeously and imperially
arrayed, had every human glory and ornament on her, and a rich cup
of prostituting yet gross idolatries in her hand. "Abominations"
are simply idols; "filthiness of her fornication," all the horrible
corruption that accompanies it. Her cup was full of them. She was
in the desert; no springs of God were there. It was not, so to
speak, God's land, no heavenly country. To spiritual understanding
she bore on her forehead her character (yet one known only when
spiritually known), of the great city of corruption, source of all
seduction to men and of all idolatry in the earth: such was
Popery. But this was not all. All the blood of the saints was found
in her: she was the persecuting murderess of those God delighted
in, and who bore witness to Jesus.* The prophet was astonished --
for it was what the church had come to.

{*It is important to remark
that formal religion, which rests on ancient claims as established,
and which is left behind as to the truth by others who have
received it, is the regular habitual instigator of persecution,
though others may be the persecutors. So it was with the Jews, so
in the universal history of the world. It always becomes false as
regards truth, though it may retain some and important truths. The
truths which test the heart and its obedience are not there.}

The beast on which the woman rode -- the renewed Roman empire,
blasphemous and diabolical, to appear in an eighth and last form
and be destroyed

The angel then describes the beast on which she rode. It had
been, ceased to exist, and then it comes up again from direct
diabolical sources -- comes up out of the abyss. The renewed Roman
Empire, which had disappeared, is blasphemous and diabolical in
nature, and in this character goes to destruction: yet all but the
elect on the earth will be in admiration of it when they see the
beast that was, is not, and shall be present. Of itself this marks
the Roman or Latin Empire, only that it will reappear more
formally. But Rome is more distinctly marked. It is the city of
the seven hills. Nor was this even all. It was the existing
authority in the time of the prophecy: five of its governing powers
had fallen; one was there; there was then one yet to come for a
short space, and then the beast out of the abyss, the last
diabolical state of the empire, would appear, and it would be
destroyed. The last however is not a new form; it is one of the
seven, though an eighth. My impression is, that the first Napoleon
and his brief empire is the seventh, and we have now to wait for
the development of the last. The beast, though imperial, has ten
horns, ten distinct kingdoms. They have their power, and for the
same period, with the beast. But they all give their power to the
beast, and make war against Christ, the rejected One on earth; but
He shall overcome them. For, despised as He may be, supreme
authority is His, and there are others coming with Him, not merely
angels but called ones, His saints.

Details and explanations of the symbols employed and the means
of Babylon's judgment; the woman identified

Details are then added. The waters are explained as peoples,
multitudes, nations, and tongues -- masses of populations in their
diverse divisions. Next the ten horns, the kingdoms which are
associated with the beast, and the beast (for so it is to be read)
hate the whore and eat her flesh and burn her with fire (first,
take all her substance and fatness, and then destroy her); for they
are to give their kingdom to the blasphemous beast until God's
words are fulfilled. And then we are expressly told that the woman
(not "the whore" -- the last is her corrupt idolatrous character --
but the "woman"), who as riding the beast was to be such, is
Rome. All this chapter (Rev. 17) is description.